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S1. E5.
Caroline Mathilde's captivity
The insane Danish king Christian the 7th was married to the English king's sister Caroline Mathilde. The lonely young woman cheated on her king with his personal physician Struensee, who used his power over the king to rule Denmark. But Struensee was deposed in a coup and executed, while Caroline Mathilde and her infant daughter were imprisoned at the winter-cold Kronborg Castle. She was separated from the king and her daughter was taken from her when, after five months, she was taken from the castle by English warships and sailed to a castle in Celle in Hanover.
S1. E5. Caroline Mathilde's captivity
02.NOV.2020Meet your host, Nanna Winther
Nanna Winther is a journalist and has hosted a number of history podcasts. In this episode, she joins forces with senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, Poul Grinder, and explores the secrets of Kronborg.
Photographer: Karina Tenberg
Among other things, you can meet
Poul GrinderSenior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark
+45 41 20 61 15About Poul GrinderPoul Grinder
- Poul Grinder
Senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark
+45 41 20 61 15About Poul GrinderPoul Grinder
The secrets of Kronborg 5
Caroline Mathilde's captivity
You probably know Kronborg? The big old castle located near Elsinore. It's Hamlet's Castle. It's where Shakespeare set his most famous play. It's where Holger Danske sits in the basement and naps while supposedly looking after Denmark. But it's not really Hamlet's, and Holger Danske is both a mythical legendary figure and a statue. In reality, Kronborg was the castle of Danish kings and queens, used to instill fear and impress. Parties were held here that were talked about throughout Europe. The castle was besieged, it burned down, it became the setting for provocative infidelity, imprisonment, betrayal and theft. In this podcast, we tackle the real stories that actually HAPPENED at Kronborg. Join narrator Nanna Winther and senior researcher Poul Grinder-Hansen on a trip to Kronborg. A trip where they lock themselves in tower rooms, go down into the casemates, jump around in the Queen's bedroom, all while telling stories that took place right here in these rooms at Kronborg. In the fifth episode, we hear about Caroline Mathilde's captivity.
Now we've entered the area of the castle where the commander used to live. Now there are exhibition rooms of various kinds, but it was here that the castle's permanent residents lived. In the 18th century, it was often the case that the entire Kronborg Castle was unheated most of the time, and it was really only down here in the commander's quarters that it was warm and comfortable. The rest was very cold and a bit deserted.
Yes, so it was furnished in a more homely way and warmed up. Contrary to what it sounds like, there wasn't someone playing a piano all the time... It's not a piano, what kind of piano do you play?
It sounds like some shells and hurdy-gurdies and stuff like that. It's Renaissance music playing in the background because there's a small exhibition about the history of Kronborg Castle. But that exhibition is set up in the area where the commander lived.
Yes, because for much of the year there was no royalty.
Then there was no one. Especially not when we get to the 1700s, because at that time it was still officially a royal castle. But in reality it was a large, strong fortress with hundreds of soldiers, but the soldiers didn't actually live in the castle - not until the late 1700s - and lived in Elsinore with the citizens of the city, where they rented poor attic rooms. Then they showed up at the castle and served here. At the end of the 1700s, Kronborg began to be transformed into a barracks, where subdivisions were gradually made so that you could have crew quarters and lots of beds and everything like that and changed the character of the castle so much. But it's not until we get closer to 1800 that you start to do that. And then in the 1800s, the whole castle, pretty much the whole castle, becomes a barracks, where you build extra floors and everything. It changes a lot of character.
That sounds terrible.
Well, 600 soldiers have lived inside the castle at one time or another.
But the reason we're standing here, where the commander had his residence in the middle... Aghr... across the center.
The mid to late 1700s. Where we are now, we are in the 1770s.
So it's not in the middle. It's still near the end of the 1770s when Caroline Mathilde, the wife of Christian the Seventh, is interned, actually? Here.
Yes, objectively speaking, she will be. And that sounds strange too. Why would you intern a queen like that? And the story behind it is, very briefly, that the 15-year-old English princess Caroline Mathilde married the 17-year-old Danish king Christian the Seventh. And she came to Denmark to live here and preferably to give birth to an heir to the throne. But Caroline Mathilde was such a chubby teenager who, for good reason, didn't know much about the world when she arrived in Denmark. And then she was confronted with a somewhat difficult personality in the form of Christian the 7th, who suffered from insanity. He was actually quite gifted, but it doesn't help if you become more and more insane at the same time, and he did. And he had little desire to have anything to do with the Queen. He was almost a little afraid of her, one gets the impression.
The king had a personal physician named Struensee, who was very good at handling the king and knew how to make him calm down and stop behaving too hysterically and strangely, which he often did. And his calming influence on the king also meant that he often spent time with the royal couple, which meant that the young queen was captivated by the gifted and visionary doctor that Struensee was. In the end, a relationship between Struensee and Caroline Mathilde actually developed. And the king probably knew that. But it didn't bother him in the slightest, because he thought he wouldn't have to do anything like that. So he didn't mind, and he liked Struensee and Caroline Mathilde was fine too. So it worked at the palace, and conversely, Struensee used the king as a kind of tool; an automaton who could sign all sorts of laws that Struensee proposed. The king just signed everything. This gave Struensee a very powerful position in Denmark. But it was also a very vulnerable position. So in that respect, Struensee was not a conscious power player who made sure to expand his base. He should have known that under Danish royal law, it was highly criminal to have a relationship with the queen. And he didn't do much to hide it.
He must also have known that all these wild reforms he introduced - almost freedom of the press and the abolition of all sorts of wild punishments - was how he really tried to bring Denmark into the modern age. He must also have known that he made some enemies on that side, while letting the queen?
Yes, that's right. That's what I mean when I say that he wasn't good at thinking in terms of realpolitik. He was a visionary man who saw the chance to transform Denmark into the ideal society of the Enlightenment. And some of the things he did were perfectly suited to making enemies - disbanding the Life Guards, for example. Then you suddenly had a whole bunch of very, very dissatisfied officers, and what could he do? They demanded that if he was going to do something like that. He had to have some powerful allies who could protect him and look after him. And it wasn't like that. On the contrary. There were some powerful enemies who then plotted to depose him. This happened in early January 1772, just after a masked ball at Christiansborg. And then at night, he was arrested and immediately taken to the Citadel and locked up in the prison there. And Caroline Mathilde, the Queen, well, she was also woken up in the middle of the night and taken away from Christiansborg in a carriage at full speed with a soldier's escort up to the winter-cold Kronborg, where she was installed here, where we are standing in the commander's residence, because it was the only place you could possibly keep someone in the castle, because everything else was freezing cold. Here she could at least be in a warm home, so...
She could bring her little daughter, who was her and Struensee's daughter.
Yes, she was allowed to bring her little daughter.
Which was how old?
Yes, how old was she? She couldn't have been very old considering...
...that it was a baby being breastfed...
...well, a 4-month-old baby or something like that. And she was so with and the queen and child, they retired to a room. She refused to come out of that bedroom for a long time and didn't want anything to eat or anything. She was both shocked and unhappy because she was truly in love with Struensee. We know from the trial that was held that there were all kinds of witnesses who were questioned about all kinds of different things, and one witness said that she had a small locket with a drawing of Struensee that she carried inside her, which she smuggled out of Christiansborg and brought up here to Kronborg, where she hid it under her pillow so she could take out the picture of Struensee, so she was obviously very fond of him. Therefore, it was of course extra shocking that she eventually heard about the trial and he ended up being sentenced to death and beheaded. So in that way, he disappeared from her life. She herself was sitting in this enclosure. It sounded so nice that she lived at Kronborg Castle. You could say to the outside world, "Well, the queen is living here at the moment", but that was mainly because it was a strong fortress with soldiers all around. In other words, I couldn't come and free her. She had been locked up.
Yes, they didn't want her to have any contact with anyone.
Not at all.
But she is, well, she is the English king's younger sister, so you also have a bit of a problem in terms of - as you say, "Well, we have her in a castle", but they knew that she was locked up anyway, right? Had she been captured?
Yes, the whole story attracted European attention. So everywhere in Europe, people were talking about Struensee and Caroline Mathilde, and there was no hiding it. Rumors also spread in a different way, and in England, the king was certainly not content to keep a close eye on what the Danes were doing. From the Danish side, they tried to... Well, first you have to say that she stayed here in the commandant's residence for several months, and only when Struensee admitted that he was having an affair with the queen was it decided that she could get a divorce - or rather that the king could get a divorce from Caroline Mathilde. After that, she was divorced; now she was Queen, but she was no longer Queen of Denmark. She was just a divorced queen, and the Danish side wanted to make her into something else. And so they started decorating Aalborg Castle. So they thought she could live out the rest of her days in Ålborghus. Those were the Danish plans. But in England, they thought that the Danes should not be allowed to keep her locked up. Even if it was a castle in some corner of Denmark. So they hinted strongly and started to equip a fleet - "We'll sail over and conquer the queen", you might say. They would have ten warships and some bombers and such, which could be sailed against Denmark if the Danes did not become sensible and let her go free.
And that was the situation. While she was walking here, not knowing anything about anything. The British ambassador could not be allowed to visit her. But she was here, but gradually she got a little milder conditions. In the beginning she had just stayed here with the commander. She has nothing to do, what would she do? So she went to the commander's library, because she likes to read. The only thing he had were books about military bastions and defenses and famous generals. But she had to read her way through Caroline Mathilde, because she loves reading so much. But he also wrote - he wrote daily reports on how she was doing to the authorities in Copenhagen - he wrote that he hoped she would soon be able to move somewhere else, because my fortress history library would soon be finished. Now she has almost read through it all. But as time went on, she became more comfortable. Then she got her piano, she played the piano. She got her little lapdog and more books of a different kind, we believe, than what she had read down here with the commander. So she got milder conditions, and as the weather got milder, they started to use the rest of the castle more and warmed it up, and that had already started...
Yeah, and she got - not friends, but you know, she got courtiers and handmaidens and...
Yes, she started to get the surroundings that belong to a queen. And so she moved into the area that was with the old queen's room. And that became the place that was later shown as Caroline Mathilde's room. There's a large room and a tower room with a view of the Sound. Since then, people have imagined her standing there, looking out over the Sound and longing for England or for Struensee or something similar. She probably did just that.
Yes, but she wasn't trapped in a tiny tower room.
No, she hadn't.
She actually had large parts of the castle at her disposal.
She lived there as a kind of queen, but she still didn't have her freedom.
No, no, no, no, no, no. She was... I mean, she was guarded by guards, and she had to... Was she allowed to communicate with anyone as time went on?
No, she wasn't really allowed to. And at some point, the British ambassador was allowed to visit her. But that was in April - it was shortly before she made an agreement with the British that she could actually be allowed to leave Denmark and go to the English king's possessions. But that only comes after a while. Then you're also allowed to go for a walk on the rampart, so she can get some fresh air, which she also liked.
That's actually what we're doing now. First of all, Kronborg Castle is closing, and even though we've had the keys and locked ourselves in and out of various places, we're not allowed to be here after closing time. So now we have to...
Let's go.
And then you come out to the huge courtyard, which is actually really beautiful. And there's actually such a wonderful calm here. So I think when we come out of the courtyard, there's a bit more wind, because it's four wings, the castle, it's not three wings, as you said with Frederiksborgslot. It's simply four.
Yes, it closes in around the courtyard. And it's true, there can be shelter in the castle courtyard, while there is almost always some kind of wind up on the bastions around the castle.
Yes, but then we'll just hand over the keys here. Isn't that it?
That could be it... They're probably closing here too, so we probably can't go up to the flag bastion.
Oh no, because it's within the facility. Yes, okay, yes.
Now I'm just going to leave the keys in the guardroom.
Yes, well otherwise we'll have to give it to her.
It looks like there aren't any, so we'll go here and give them out here. Thanks for the loan.
It doesn't look like there's anyone in the guardroom, so I'm going to let you...
That's fine, I'll hand them in with my own.
Well, that was good. Thanks for now.
I hope you got something out of it?
We have!
So now we're looking at the Flag Bastion and then at Kronborg behind it. And that's one of the old bastions from Frederik the Second's time. And then we're standing on some of the beach batteries facing the Sound. But when we came out here, it's because eventually Caroline Mathilde... We sit down here on the rocky edge ...
Where she's just been locked up for months.
Yes, she finally got to get out and breathe some fresh air on the ramparts. Only on the inner ramparts. The inner ramparts, the old bastions from the time of Frederick the Second, where she was allowed to go for a walk. And so, she walked with the commander's wife, with whom she had become somewhat friendly, and looked out over the Sound and waited for some British ships to arrive. In the end, the Danes gave in so that Caroline Mathilde did not have to be interned at Ålborghus, but could instead be allowed to travel from Denmark on some British warships. At the end of May, three English warships arrived at Kronborg. They came up to the castle and picked her up, but not her daughter, because the Danes didn't want to get rid of her infant - or very young daughter.
She was by definition a Danish royal daughter, and therefore a queen could not simply travel with her. Admittedly, it was Struensee and her daughter. But they didn't care about that: Officially, she was a royal child. So she had to say goodbye to her daughter, just as she had lost contact with her son - the later Frederick the Sixth - on the night of the coup in January. So she traveled alone on the Danish warships to the state of Hanover, which belonged to the English royal family, and there in the town of Celle, she was given a small court in the castle that was there. And she lived there for a few years, but not very many.
Why doesn't she go home to England?
I think she has been a controversial figure, so they wanted to bring her to England. But I don't want her in England itself, but as an English possession, so if you put her there in Celle. She herself was under English control, but still not one that attracted too much attention, because there had been some scandal about it. She had indeed had a relationship with that doctor. It wasn't something you liked - not even in the English royal family. But she was English royalty and therefore had to be treated properly. But you couldn't just incorporate her as part of the official royal family either.
So she basically loses everything. As you say, on the night of the coup, she loses her husband, whom she wasn't particularly fond of, but maybe they have a kind of friendship anyway, her lover and her son, and then when she's sent away she loses her daughter.
Then she is left alone.
Yes, because she wasn't going home to her brother in England either.
No, she didn't have to. She could perhaps bring along a few ladies-in-waiting that she knew from here. Then she got some new ladies-in-waiting down in Celle and had to try to find a life there, which she probably had some success with. They were happy for her in Celle, because no royals had ever really lived in that castle before. So it cast a bit of a glow over the town. Unfortunately, she didn't get to live there for very long, because she died at the age of 24 from some kind of illness. But if you visit Celle, you can see some small remnants of the story of her life down there. And it made an impression on me to see one of her own dresses that she had worn as a young woman, because it certainly emphasizes that she wasn't such a neat little trinket that you want to make her into in more romantic portrayals in movies and stuff like that. But that she was actually a very chubby young lady?
Now there is a very big dress.
There's a very, very big dress - it's enormous. The strange thing is that she was quite a sporty type anyway. When she was with Struensee, she loved horseback riding, where she rode in men's clothes. Which was also really provocative at the time - putting on pants and riding in men's clothes on a horse. It didn't look like anything.
It's been horrible for her, because she comes here at 15 years old, and then there's a 17-year-old skinny, pale boy...
Which is terrified for her.
Who is terrified of her and who is crazy. For example, there's a place where it's described that he - is it also here at Kronborg? - and he smashes some chamber pots.
That's right. It's because they had been up here on a short visit, where they sat, and then there had been a single overnight stay, right? And then you could see the accounts afterwards and the expenses, which included several broken things from the king's room, because he threw things around and smashed chamber pots and mirrors and whatever else he came into contact with during such impotent tantrums. And that was exactly the kind of thing that Struensee was good at calming him down so that he didn't go completely crazy like that.
Did he ever look at her?
No, you don't get that impression. I think he also treated her with such distant politeness in real life.
Does she have any sources where she describes their relationship? Not her and Struensee, but her and the king?
No, she has not commented on that. It would not be appropriate to say anything about it.
Does the king have any places where he speaks about his wife?
Yes, in the strange way that he has, for example, made some drawings of the people involved in those events. Where he just writes their names underneath...
So where he has drawn himself and her and Struensee?
Yes, and Struensee and they all look the same. But he drew them, because it's like this whole gallery of characters that have abandoned him, and that he... But he doesn't have such precise statements about how he looked at her. Other than you have accounts from servants about how he behaved and how difficult it was to get him to fulfill his marital obligations and things like that. There are plenty of people who followed what was going on. A royal marriage like that wasn't exactly a private affair.
So you know that they might have... That they might have made a son or been?
Yes, they have. So they managed to get the king dragged in to her and behave as he should, I suppose. But I have the impression that he was now very well satisfied...
To the execution ground almost in his eyes, right? (they laugh)
At least he was hesitant about it. So it must be strange for her to imagine such an alert and devoted spouse. He certainly hasn't been - it's not that he's done her any harm. But he hasn't been particularly interested in her in any way either. So it was something completely different when Struensee suddenly showed his interest. But since then, it became infamous throughout Europe, and a fictional - what would you call it - novel was published that pretended to be written by Caroline Mathilde. A novel that depicted "The Memoirs of an unhappy Queen" or whatever it was called in English. It was published in all sorts of European languages, and people really thought it was her own. The author knew enough about what had happened to make it sound plausible. And then it also read everything she had in terms of thoughts and worries into this. It became a bestseller around Europe, so.
In the 18th century?
Yes, in the late 1700s. So people were crazy about it. That's why it became a new attraction, when people came to Kronborg, they had to see the room where Caroline Mathilde had lived. So the sights back then were... Yes, Caroline Mathilde was one thing, and people were already talking about Hamlet back then. But first and foremost also about Holger Danske, who was a legendary hero who was said to live down in the casemates. That was the tourist destination, and that was Holger Danske, and then it was Caroline Mathilde's room. This is what was shown by the tourist guides of the time, such as some of the local soldiers at the castle, who were paid "rigsdaler" if they put on shows, so they took the tourists around to different places.
Still, it's also hard that her life story ends up being something like "Oh, let's take a look at that room where she was trapped."
Yes, it's strange. But her name was remembered.
Yes, that's right.
But if that's the only thing, it's not very satisfying. I think it was a bit of a consolation that down in Celle, a beautiful memorial has actually been erected. When she died, a beautiful marble monument was erected in the town park, where she loved to go for walks. It was made a few years after her death.
So they were proud of her there.
Then they were proud of her, so there in Celle, she was actually honored as an important person in the town.
But it also sounds like, if you put together a pile of some of the little information you have about her, that she was actually quite an interesting person. You say she liked to ride in men's clothes and read a lot of books, and that she was interested in enlightenment and the future.
There was a lot of discussion about how big a role she played in Struensee's reforms, and I don't think historians fully agree on how big her role was. But it's hard to imagine anything other than that she shared some of his ideas. Or he shared his ideas with her. I'm pretty sure he did, and she probably admired him and admired those visions.
Yes, they've been grabbed by the damn... And then just think: "Let's do it man! Let's make Denmark!" (snaps) Like that.
Let's do that.
And then came, what was it Reventlow and...?
There was a whole string of officers and then the old Queen Dowager Juliane Marie, who pulled the strings...
I imagine they all have bad breath. A bunch of grumpy old people come in with bad breath and then it stops.
But it is true. On the other hand, they've also gotten a bad press, the people who carried out the coup. Because they were backward people, but they may actually have been... They actually had the law on their side. Because Struensee hadn't ruled the way he was supposed to according to... It doesn't make sense that a doctor would trick a king into signing all sorts of things. It was also completely reprehensible, so they had a very good case when they staged a coup. And then an excellent historian named Ove Høegh-Guldberg became the prime minister, who then had a government for the next decade.
Was it normal to have a prime minister, or was it something that was introduced in the wake of how crazy Christian the 7th was?
Well, they had something called the secret prime minister. It wasn't a hero like the current prime minister. He had a role, but it was under - it was always the absolute king who was officially the one who decided everything. But in reality, it wasn't the king who decided much at all. Christian the 7th's father hadn't been particularly fit to rule either, so it was his staff - the foreign minister and the court marshal and all sorts of others who really pulled the strings.
But didn't it give rise to a different kind of assessment of whether this thing about a solitary and hereditary... Well, uh...
It should have done, yes.
You think, if you really, really, really, really don't want to or can't do it at all, is it a good idea that it's just about blood and heritage? But no wild debate came out of that?
It didn't, no.
Especially not in the wake of the Struensee incident...
No, because what happened was that when Frederik VI, the son of Caroline Mathilde and Christian VII, became a teenager, he staged a coup against those who had imprisoned her - his mother and Struensee - and seized power and then reacted... He used the same trick that Struensee had done - getting the king to sign a dismissal notice for his advisors. And so he became a kind of guardian for his insane father. So, especially from 1784 onwards, it was Frederik who ruled even though he was only crown prince, because Christian the Seventh didn't die until 1808, when he had been inaccessible to everything for many, many years, but...
How old was he?
Not very old by our standards - he was probably in his 50s. But anyway, it...
Yes, maybe even older than they originally thought.
Well, maybe not? Yeah, maybe not. But then in this way, Caroline Mathilde's son went on to become King of Denmark. And her and Struensee's daughter, Louise Augusta, she married the Duke of Augustenborg - Augustenborg in Schleswig-Holstein. And then her daughter married the Danish King Christian the Eighth again, because she was always considered a nice royal person. So this means that Struensee's blood actually passed on within the Danish royal family...
And also those sitting there today, yes.
Well, more or less, anyway.
Yes, yes, in a roundabout way, as they say.
In a roundabout way, yes. So it's a strange story.
But after Caroline Mathilde is picked up by English ships and sailed to Celle, Kronborg is... So how much is it actually used by royalty?
It's hardly ever used. It's just sitting there and being used as a barracks with soldiers swarming around everywhere. They keep a tiny corner with some of the rooms that had been the King of Queen's apartment. So if royalty were to pass by, it was somewhere they could go. But the only time royalty really stayed at the castle for the last time. It was during the reign of Frederik VII and his commoner wife, Countess Danner, because they both loved living in old castles and manor houses and palaces and stuff like that. So they had this really fancy apartment with lots of red plush and fringe and stuff in one wing of the castle, which they used for a couple of years. And Fredrik was so interested in the old Renaissance kings that when he had a visit from the Swedish king, he arranged a dinner where cannon bowls were made, just as they had done in the time of Frederik II. So every time he said "Cheers!", the cannons were fired.
It must be the ones standing here on the flag bastion that we're looking at...
So he was a nerd like us, who found the story really exciting and dived into it...
Yes, yes, that's what he had a crush on back then. And it fits very well with the flag bastion. As we can see, the castle behind it is the queen's canopy tower that rises, and then the queen's rooms and the king's room. So along that line of windows, so it was easy when he sat there and ate. And that was one of the rooms where it happened. Yes, you could fire the cannon just like in the good old days.
It hasn't been good sitting down here where we are, has it? Because we're kind of sitting right below, and it's not like you might get hit by a cannon, but it's probably been a bit violent.
Well, they're not supposed to have live rounds when they fire a salute.
No, no, of course it's not.
But it has happened over the years that soldiers have messed up. We have stories, dating back to the 15th-16th centuries, of a ship being hit by a cannon shot during a salute at Kronborg because some fool accidentally put a bullet instead of just gunpowder. Then there's a bit of a compensation case, right? Because you weren't supposed to be shot when you were just sailing along quite innocently. But now there are still cannons up there, and they are also used to fire a salute on various occasions.
Well, I was just about to - you beat me to it. There are times when the queen sails by, so...
Then a salute is fired. A salute was also fired when Prince Henrik died, for example. So there are certain markings. So it's modern artillerymen who are run over and fire cannons.
They can't use those guns.
Yes, those are the ones they use, yes. The ancient 18th century cannons.
Now for Søren. Wow.
It was an accident a few years ago when they hadn't completely wiped the barrel dry of sparks when they fired it. Then you have to take it down and wipe it away before you put in new gunpowder. But they hadn't gotten the last one out. So instead, the soldier and the stick were shot over the edge. He landed down here, but luckily he survived. But it was an accident like something that could happen when you use old abandoned guns like these.
A very wild glimpse of what might have just happened once in a while.
Yes, you can.
He simply flew down. That's a long way down there! But there's grass down there; he probably landed on the grass.
It has probably been his luck.
Alright, but in that way you could say Caroline Mathilde's stay actually ends an era of how the castle was actually used.
Yes, it's the last time anyone really lived there for a long time. So it has moved more and more in the direction of becoming a museum. Which is how it functions today.
Well, there's no royalty coming to live here today.
They don't come and live here, no. For a visit at most.
If they wanted to, they couldn't even do that, could they? I mean, if they said: "we're just coming to sleep".
No, I don't think so, they couldn't.
It's ours now!
Yes, it's very funny.
This was just a small part of Kronborg's history. A little peek into the history of Denmark's largest Renaissance castle. The castle has gone through a lot of wild things in the years it has been located where Denmark almost kisses Sweden on the foot.
There's no longer any reason to believe that Kronborg's cannons can shoot ships into the Sound or be used to throw parties for Europe's royalty and nobility, firing them every time someone says cheers.
In return, we now have a castle full of stories whose echoes we can still hear.